Existence Of Other Minds Research Articles

Creative minds like ours? Large Language Models and the creative aspect of language use

Descartes famously constructed a language test to determine the existence of other minds. The test made critical observations about how humans use language that purportedly distinguishes them from animals and machines. These observations were carried into the generative (and later biolinguistic) enterprise under what Chomsky in his Cartesian Linguistics, terms the “creative aspect of language use” (CALU). CALU refers to the stimulus-free, unbounded, yet appropriate use of language—a tripartite depiction whose function in biolinguistics is to highlight a species-specific form of intellectual freedom. This paper argues that CALU provides a set of facts that have significant downstream effects on explanatory theory-construction. These include the internalist orientation of linguistics, the invocation of a competence-performance distinction, and the postulation of a generative language faculty that makes possible—but does not explain—CALU. It contrasts the biolinguistic approach to CALU with the recent wave of enthusiasm for the use of Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) as tools, models, or theories of human language, arguing that such uses neglect these fundamental insights to their detriment. It argues that, in the absence of replication, identification, or accounting of CALU, LLMs do not match the explanatory depth of the biolinguistic framework, thereby limiting their theoretical usefulness.

PROBLEMS OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALISM

The article attempts to identify the problems of epistemological fundamentalism. The author compares some types of fundamentalism and alternative epistemological theories — coherentism, pragmatism and infi nitism. The author argues that the main problems of epistemological fundamentalism should be considered the fundamen-tal inability to defend the declared infallibility and incorrigibility of basic beliefs, the existence of other minds and the inevitability of mistakes of a knowing agent. It is concluded that fundamentalism cannot be discarded, despite a large number of critical reservations.

Semantic compositionality and Berkeley's divine language argument

AbstractCritics of Berkeley's divine language argument usually dismiss it for one of two main reasons: (1) it appears to be a mere variation on Descartes's argument for the existence of other minds, or (2) there is too little similarity between human languages and the ‘discourse of nature’. I will first show that the compositional features of language on which Berkeley partially bases his argument include systematicity and productivity – not merely the generativity on which Descartes's is based. I will then show that the analogy between human languages and the discourse of nature is stronger than typically appreciated, even given contemporary understandings of language.

Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, and Skepticism: A Response to Saito

Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, and Skepticism: A Response to Saito

George Berkeley and Motoori Norinaga on Other Minds and There Being “Nothing to Be Done”

The 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley argued that we might know of the existence of other minds based upon our experience of having certain sense-data or “ideas” imprinted upon us. This served, for Berkeley, ultimately as a basis for us to know of a “grand” other mind orchestrating the order among said ideas imprinted upon us, that is, God. This leap to God, however, has been challenged over the past three decades. A very rudimentary form could still be retained though from Berkeley’s argument for God, whereby Berkeley argued that human minds were dependent upon other “more powerful” minds. I shall open with the contention that Berkeley did not actually show that there must exist one or many other minds orchestrating the order among imprinted ideas. This contention shall serve as the ground for speculating what form Berkeleyanism would take, if we posit many other minds instead of one God. I shall argue that this Berkeleyanism “reworked” on the premise of many other minds, could understand those ideas imprinted upon us as having been decided by a commune of finite other minds. I shall also argue that the experience of having ideas imprinted upon us is identical to an experience the Japanese thinker of the same century, Motoori Norinaga, expressed with the phrase semusubenaki (“There is nothing to be done”). This experience of there being “nothing-to-be-done” (Nasusubenaki) shall also be situated within the Berkeleyanism “reworked” around the premise of a commune of other minds imprinting ideas upon us to speculative ends.

Проблема нормативности сознания без субъекта

This paper is devoted to the normative nature of mental acts that prohibit, allow or dictate intellectual activity of some kind. These acts precede all cognitive processes and provide all sorts of rational activity. The decision to fulfill an act A is founded on the information about its significance, represented by deontic modalities. According to the European thinkers, pure Self exists undoubtedly and founds the rational relation between any type of objects including the moral laws. Kant considered awareness of the rational law as a special mental fact which is not an inference from any previous mental data. Husserl’s phenomenology investigates mental acts without (abstracting from) empirical information about existing of some things in the external world. Particularly, one must not assume the premise that other people exist really. The relevant information about obligations, norms and mental laws is information which is represented by their pure forms. It strictly determines the will, forces us to follow the rules and represents the objective circumstances in the ideal sphere. From our point of view, the fact of normative mental activity implies the thesis that the mind is not alone. But it does not imply neither obligatory existence of Self, nor obligatory existence of other minds. Hence the possibility of non-existence of pure Self is consistent and compatible with the normative nature of consciousness. Buddhist philosophy does not assert the existence of pure Self. An intentional system fulfils norms accordingly to the rules of a higher order. The results of mental studies achieved by Buddhism help us to develop and unite the transcendental and phenomenological approaches to the normative analysis.

Dismissing the Moral Sceptic: A Wittgensteinian Approach

Cartesian scepticism poses the question of how we can justify our belief that other humans experience consciousness in the same way that we do. Wittgenstein’s response to this scepticism is one that does not seek to resolve the problem by providing a sound argument against the Cartesian sceptic. Rather, he provides a method of philosophical inquiry which enables us to move past this and continue our inquiry without the possibility of solipsism arising as a philosophical problem in the first place. In this paper, I propose that Wittgenstein’s method of dismissing the Cartesian sceptic can also be applied to the problems posed by the ‘moral sceptic’, who denies the truth of all ethical or moral claims. I will argue that in the same way Wittgenstein’s focus on public language enables us to dismiss the traditional problem of other minds, a focus on public moral practices or language-games also enables us to dismiss the idea that moral claims are always ‘meaningless’, ‘false’ or ‘nonsensical’. On this account, the moral sceptic is misguided in much the same way as the solipsist who implicitly admits the existence of other minds in her practices. The moral sceptic who still engages in moral activities also implicitly admits the existence of meaningful moral positions. Wittgenstein’s dismissal of the Cartesian sceptic, as I understand it, can be broadly divided into two parts. The first part is an account of language acquisition. This part outlines how we might come to see other humans as conscious, thinking, feeling beings from a causal perspective. This suggests that we can arrive at an understanding of other minds as a primary perception itself - without needing to posit this perception as a kind of deductive or inductive hypothesis. Secondly, we can see how this relates to an epistemic model of language. This focuses on the role of language as something which consists of rule-governed activities, where the existence of other minds is embedded in our understanding of the world as a kind of grammatical rule, rather than an observational hypothesis. From both these arguments the Cartesian sceptic is, (on Wittgenstein’s account), irrelevant to some forms of philosophical inquiry. This is because the sceptic takes the existence of other minds to be a rational hypothesis/inference when it is not. I suggest that this approach can be applied to moral scepticism if we take certain normative claims as grammatical dispositions (practical and tautological), rather than rational or metaphysical propositions. Hence, the moral sceptic who offers a rational or logical critique of these moral foundations is not necessarily saying anything relevant to our practices – the moral stances which they refute as rationally meaningless were never based on purely rational or logical hypotheses in the first place.

Cynical Self-Doubt and the Grounds of Sympathy


 
 
 
 
 The foundational essay of Stanley Cavell’s oeuvre, “Knowing and Acknowledging,” prepares the author’s continued interest in sceptical doubt about the existence of other minds as well as his specific approach to this particular philosophical problem. One useful way of approaching “Knowing and Acknowledging” is to suggest that it addresses the other minds sceptic so as to excavate alongside him the underlying ground from which his doubt about the existence of other minds emerges. Cavell, in other words, appears to compose his argument in such a way as to lead the sceptic along a series of steps that demonstrate that his sceptical doubt does not simply exist as a self-contained or self-standing problem. In doing so, Cavell traces the emergence of sceptical doubt about other minds to a specific anxiety about our reliance on expressions of sympathy as a way of responding to the suffering of others. Cavell argues that the sceptic subsequently intellectualizes this anxiety into sceptical doubt. Cavell explicitly does not seek to refute the sceptic; he even accepts that the sceptic’s intellectual doubt is, in its way, valid. For Cavell, to try to straightforwardly refute sceptical doubt is simply to accept the terms on which it presents itself, and thereby to extend the sceptic’s view. Instead, Cavell tries to get the sceptic to a point where he will regard the nature, and the origins, of his doubt differently than he did before.
 
 
 

HOW TO AVOID SOLIPSISM WHILE REMAINING AN IDEALIST: LESSONS FROM BERKELEY AND DHARMAKIRTI

This essay examines the strategies that Berkeley and Dharmakirti utilize to deny that idealism entails solipsism. Beginning from similar arguments for the non-existence of matter, the two philosophers employ markedly different strategies for establishing the existence of other minds. This difference stems from their responses to the problem of intersubjective agreement. While Berkeley's reliance on his Cartesian inheritance does allow him to account for intersubjective agreement without descending into solipsism, it nevertheless prevents him from establishing the existence of other finite minds. I argue that Dharmakirti, in accounting for intersubjective agreement causally, is able to avoid Berkeley's shortcoming. I conclude by considering a challenge to Dharmakirti's use of inference that Ratnakirti, a Buddhist successor of Dharmakirti, advances in his "Disproof of the Existence of Other Minds" and briefly exploring a possible response that someone who wants to advocate an idealist position could give.

Transcendental Arguments About Other Minds and Intersubjectivity

AbstractThis article describes some of the main arguments for the existence of other minds, and intersubjectivity more generally, that depend upon a transcendental justification. This means that our focus will be largely on ‘continental’ philosophy, not only because of the abiding interest in this tradition in thematising intersubjectivity, but also because transcendental reasoning is close to ubiquitous in continental philosophy. Neither point holds for analytic philosophy. As such, this essay will introduce some of the important contributions of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean‐Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Karl‐Otto Apel, all of whom use transcendental reasoning as a key part of their analyses of intersubjectivity, and we also consider the work of Peter Strawson who does likewise in the analytic tradition.

The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?

What makes the human mind unique? One answer would be our particular kind of culture, which might be called ‘mindsharing’ culture. Human beings are not only able to detect the existence of other minds, and to understand that those minds have beliefs, but are also able to form networks of trust built around shared intentions and beliefs. No other species does anything like this. Much current research in neuroscience is aimed at understanding the processes that contribute to our construction of culture. Recognizing the importance of integrating this work into their research, and of drawing neuroscientists into more collaboration, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge initiated a conference in September 2007, devoted to the theme ‘Archaeology meets neuroscience’. A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is now devoted to the proceedings of that pioneering meeting. Although understandably selective, this volume contains a smorgasbord of current ideas and research from philosophy, psychology, anthropology and archaeology. The selection of papers is diverse and stimulating. This relatively new marriage of disciplines still lacks a unifying framework, but one must start somewhere, and no time like the present. A major link between archaeology and neuroscience is provided by cognitive science, which has a foot in both camps. Some aspects of cognition, such as literacy, mathematics and music are obviously cultural in origin. Others, such as attention, perception and action stem directly from the design of the central nervous system. These two influences, brain and culture, work together in forming human cognition, and cognitive scientists find themselves in the position of having to explain many of the higher cognitive capabilities of human beings in terms of hybrid brain-culture mechanisms. Evolutionary models are one important way of ordering the evidence on hybrid mechanisms, and epigenetic factors may …

Husserl’s Phenomenological Standpoint

Husserl's phenomenology is not an attempt to answer questions about contingent fact and existence. Rather, it is an attempt to specify conceptual truths about phenomena. In particular, it takes no stand on the existence of other minds. Thus, any interpretation of Husserl's answer to the problem of intersubjectivity as affirming the existence of other minds is mistaken.

What is Doubt and When is it Reasonable?

Descartes contended that “I am obliged in the end to admit that none of my former ideas are beyond legitimate doubt” (1964, 64). Accordingly, he adopted a method of doubting everything: “Since my present aim was to give myself up to the pursuit of truth alone, I thought I must do the very opposite, and reject as if absolutely false anything as to which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I should not be left at the end believing something that was absolutely indubitable” (1964, 31). Similarly, other philosophers have raised doubts about the justifiability of beliefs concerning the external world, the existence of other minds, and moral principles; philosophical skepticism has a long history (Popkin 1979).

The Relevance of Nonsymbolic Cognition to Husserl's Fifth Meditation

In his Cartesian Meditations at the outset of the Fifth Meditation, Edmund Husserl proposes to sketch an account of how the meaning "other person" comes to be bestowed on certain items encountered in the perceived surrounding world. As he states the matter, he proposes to "discover in what intentionalities, syntheses, motivations, the sense `other ego' becomes fashioned."1 An account of the constitution of such a sense is a necessary step in an account of how objects in the world come to have the sense "there for others." The latter demonstration is itself, of course, a necessary step in the larger phenomenological project of showing how the perceived world comes to have the sense it has in the natural attitude of everyday adult life. In introducing his projected account of sense constitution, Husserl presents it as an answer to the general charge that phenomenology entails transcendental solipsism. He judges, and rightly so, that the introduction of the sense "other" adds a dimension of meaning that converts the perceived world into a common world, with the result that all apparent support is withdrawn from the accusation that phenomenology is transcendental solipsism. Unfortunately, his placing of an allusion to solipsism at the beginning rather than at the conclusion of his account (or better still, in a footnote), has often led to a construal of that account as an attempt to answer the philosophical problem of solipsism. Such an interpretation is clearly mistaken. Sense constitution is an exercise in semantics, and not in ontology. Consequently, the account can hardly be intended as a refutation of solipsism, much less a refutation via a demonstration of the existence of other persons. Admittedly, the situation is somewhat apt to engender confusion. An account of semantic constitution traces out the nature of the evidential situation grounding the constituted sense, and hence closely parallels an epistemological account of knowledge constitution. In addition, Husserl claims in his discussion of skepticism in Ideas I that an appreciation of the evidential situation suffices to reveal "the countersense" committed by those skeptical theses that view essential peculiarities of evidence as deficiencies.2 As a result, it is inevitable that the account of semantic constitution should contain, implicitly at least, a rebuttal of certain solipsistic theses, namely those committing a countersense of the sort noted by Husserl. Be this as it may, the solipsistic theses affected could not include the classical solipsistic thesis that questions the existence of other minds, where "a mind"' has the sense of "a private world of representations." The reason is simply that the sense, "private world of representations," can only be a subsequent addition to the sense "other person" being constituted in Husserl's account, and hence a sense available for solipsistic maneuvers only on the later occasion of its constitution. The present essay proposes to answer two sorts of objections commonly raised against the constitution of the sense "other" sketched in the Fifth Meditation. One sort features the claim that the sense constituted in Husserl's account is not the genuine sense of "other subject"--that the proper sense includes essential dimensions ignored in the account, dimensions such as the person's social status and function,3 or the person's radical irreducibility to another person's possible acts of consciousness.4 The second sort of objection centers on the claim that the proposed derivation is circular, that is, that it must presuppose what it sets out to constitute. Here some elaboration is in order. Objections of the second sort readily grant that Husserl is right in his estimation of the nature of the task, that to avoid circularity the projected constitution of the sense "other subject" must begin at a semantic level that contains no trace of that sense--a level Husserl terms "the sphere of ownness. …

The Vietnamese mode of self‐reference: A model for Buddhist Egology

Abstract Buddhist egology concurs with the Husserlian claim that the enipirical ego is ‘constituted’. The Buddhist ‘deconstruction’ of the ego will not, however, pace Husserl, permit the pronoun ‘I’ to refer to a purported extra‐linguistic entity. The insights here distilled from the unique mode of self‐reference functional within the Vietnamese language secure for us an unmistakable confirmation of the Buddhist thesis and have profound consequences for the philosophical problems surrounding the existence and nature of the self and the existence of other minds.

Dharmakīrti on the existence of other minds

Dharmakīrti on the existence of other minds

Why we Believe in Other Minds

One does not hear very much about the problem of other minds these days. It is not that the problem has been solved, but, I think, that its intractability has sapped its interest. It is time for a new approach, one not beholden to the traditional analogical argument or neo-traditional criteriological arguments. That is what I undertake here. Let me prepare the way for my positive thesis by explaining why all traditional thinking that sets the problem as one of justified inference from the first-person case (i.e., all traditional thinking) must fail. The problem of other minds is normally posed this way: on what basis do I infer that various organisms I observe are conscious, and is this inference justified? Each stressed word contains a hefty assumption which usually goes unchallenged and indeed unnoticed. First is the assumption that each individual, as a sort of information-processing atom, goes from non-belief to belief about the existence of other consciousnesses. Second is the assumption that the process by which this transition is effected is inference. Now, these two assumptions can both be true even if the inference involved is faulty; in that case nobody would know of other minds, even though there would now be some understanding of the process which creates belief in other minds. However, since such a process that culminated in unwarranted belief would be vain and unlikely we all suppose pre-theoretically that we know there are other minds philosophers write as if our retention of the belief depends on the soundness of the inference. In all this, the purely causal question, By what process reasonable or not do we come to believe in other minds?, is ignored. All three assumptions are wrong, but it is easiest to create a presumption against them corporately by concentrating on the second one. It is rather unlikely that anyone infers the existence of other minds for the simple reason that creatures incapable of inference, at least of complicated inference, believe in them or hold beliefs that entail the existence

Do We Have to Know Why We Are Justified in Our Beliefs?

Many hundreds of essays have been written about the problem of how to justify various generally held beliefs, such as the belief in the existence of an external world, the belief that the universe did not spring into being just five minutes ago replete with evidence seeming to indicate a much older universe, the belief in the validity of inductive reasoning, the belief that others have a mind and so on. There is however an important problem concerning each one of these problems which, has received very little attention in recent years. It is the problem why is it that people's belief in the various propositions just mentioned is independent of whether or not they are able to justify it. Let me consider the belief in other minds as an example which will illustrate the general attitude prevailing to all the beliefs referred to. There are hardly any solipsists in the world. Many intelligent people who are not philosophers could not if challenged give a defence of their belief in the existence of other minds. Their typical reaction would be that they have a very strong conviction that others cannot be merely robots, that they surely have a mind, but when it comes to justification not only are they at a loss as to how to construct one but will admit that some arguments designed to justify this belief they have heard about did not even sound intelligible to them. But even philosophers who have spent a good deal of effort to justify a belief in the mindedness of others do not seem to regard their justification as a precondition for their belief. Ask any philosopher who claims to have constructed a sound argument supporting his belief that solipsism is false, what he would do if it were conclusively demonstrated to him that his argument was unsound. Now while philosophers may very rarely admit in any particular case that their arguments are actually fallacious, they all eagerly profess to be fallible and openminded and agree that any of their arguments could in principle be proven wrong and in that case they would withdraw them.

The Concepts of the Sceptic: Transcendental Arguments and Other Minds

Strawson's attempt to refute scepticism about the existence of other minds has itself been a popular target of sceptical criticism. But the very persistence of the attacks suggests that no clinching rebuttal has yet been produced. One of the earliest and still one of the most effective responses to Strawson is Ayer's celebrated paper ‘The Concept of a Person’, in which he reasserts the position of classical empiricist scepticism on the existence of other minds. By reinterpreting and partly reconstructing Strawson's arguments I shall try to show that the sceptical position represented by Ayer is indeed incoherent, as Strawson maintains, and I shall suggest why a conclusive rebuttal of Strawson's anti-sceptical arguments has not been and is unlikely to be produced.

The Philosophical Concept of a Human Body

THE ARGUMENT from analogy for the existence of other minds has been repeatedly attacked on two general counts. Its defenders have long been criticized for attempting to justify the inference that other bodies are associated with minds by an appeal merely to one's own case, while more recently the intelligibility of the concept of mind which the formulation of such an inference requires has been seriously challenged. Nothing has been said, however, about difficulties that come to light when the other half of the Cartesian dualism is given careful scrutiny. In this paper I will argue (i) that philosophers have not clearly introduced the concept of a body in terms of which the problem of other minds and its solutions have been traditionally stated; (2) that one can raise fatal objections to attempts to introduce this concept; and (3) that the particular form of the problem of other minds which is stated in terms of the concept is the offspring of confusion and so requires no solution.